When hospital patients are supposed to take medication they generally require a nurse or other staff member to provide the medication to them. Typically, either the patient will call the nurse or the nurse will go to the patient in order to administer the medication. The nurse must first confirm, among other things, that it is the proper time to administer the medication, that the correct dosage is present, that the patient did not receive the medication from someone else, etc. After going through the details of the patient as listed on his chart the nurse may then administer the medication.
When the medication is a controlled drug, such as a strong analgesic, government regulations specify certain protocols, including detailed record keeping and accounting of each dosage of the drugs that the hospital possesses. Thus, following the confirmation of all the prerequisites for administering a medication, if the medication is a controlled drug the nurse must then proceed to sign the drug out from its stored location and return to the patient to administer the drug.
Although some medications require the nurse to perform the actual administration, a pill may be ingested by the patient using his own faculties. Nevertheless, the nurse must still spend valuable time going from one patient to the next in order to simply hand over a pill. It is not feasible to leave a plurality of pills with the patient and allow him to ingest, for instance an analgesic pill, by himself since he may become addicted to the medication and take more pills than he is allowed.
Nurses are often busy with other activities and cannot always tend to the administration of patients' medications at the precise moment that the medication should be given. Delays in administering the medication could result in a high cost to the patient by potentially worsening the patient's condition, as well as high costs to the hospital by preventing a patient from recovering quickly, thereby requiring additional outlay of monies toward medication and other hospital upkeep for the patient.
Several prior art solutions to the above-mentioned problems have been suggested, however, they all have difficulties and drawbacks associated with them.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,896,192 to Conley et al. discloses a medication dispenser for permitting access to medication doses after a minimum dosing interval between doses. The dispenser comprises a medication tray comprising medication retention areas and blank areas. A medication dose is disposed in each retention area. A cover is disposed over the medication tray, the cover defining a dose opening through which a dose in a retention area can be accessed. A controller authenticates a person to access a medication dose. The controller further aligns the dose opening with a retention area to present a medication dose through the dose opening after the minimum dosing interval has elapsed and the person has been authenticated, and wherein the controller aligns the dose opening with a blank area between minimum dosing intervals.
In order to operate the device described in Conley et al. authorized medical personal is required to manually remove the drug from the packaging and place each dosage in the retention area prior to use. This in itself is a time consuming procedure but also has the disadvantages that the pills lay open after the removal of the protective coating of the blister pack and can be affected by humidity which can lead to moisture expansion Also there is a risk of abrasion of drugs during handling or even of partial crushing thereof. Thus, unused dosages that are left over after the patient no longer requires the drug are often considered contaminated and often must be disposed of. Alternatively, if reuse of unused pills is contemplated then regulations usually require a pharmacy on the site of usage, which pharmacy must be willing to provide a service of re-blistering of drugs after the examination of each pill for defects. Usually however this is usually not practical or legal. Besides the losses caused by the disposal of the unused dosages, proper protocol requires controlled drugs to be returned to their storage location, however, due to contamination this is not possible and proper record keeping cannot be followed.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,766,219 to Hasey discloses a medication dispensing cassette comprising a housing for enclosing at least one continuous track having a plurality of receptacles for medication, wherein each receptacle accommodates one dosage of medication. An electrical drive mechanism drives the track. A pill tray receives pills dispensed from the cassette through a pill dispensing port. A lid is attached to the housing, located above the pill tray, and is openable for removal of pills.
Hasey's device requires a unique cassette manufactured specifically for the device. This alone is undesirable as it increases costs of drug manufacturers by requiring expenditure on new machinery for producing the cassette instead of relying on the already tried and true blister pack for keeping the drug in an uncontaminated environment. Moreover, the device comprises a manual drive wheel for enabling the user to manually rotate the track. When dealing with addictive analgesic drugs it is hazardous to allow the patient to control the dispensing of the drug by himself.
DE 10236909 to Udo discloses a dispenser for pills in a blister pack, having upper and lower sections between which the blister pack is disposed. Pills are positioned such that a push button dispenses pills through apertures in the upper section. Contacts on the button and around the apertures produce a signal to change the display when a pill is dispensed.
Although the device disclosed by Udo maintains left over pills in an uncontaminated state, the device does not prevent the user from removing additional pills whenever desired. This allows a potential dangerous situation to arise, wherein the patient may overdose on the drug, similar to the manner described above regarding Hasey's device.
WO 2011023941 to Sanjeet discloses a motorized deblistering dispenser for dispensing e.g. tablets, from blister packs to a patient, having a programmable control unit for controlling the operation of dispensing platforms so that one or more items are dispensed from one or more platforms.
The object of the Sanjeet's dispenser is to provide a motorized deblistering dispenser for personal use by a patient, that is capable of dispensing deblistered items from blister packs of different sizes and configurations in predetermined doses at predetermined times. In a hospital setting, where controlled drugs are required to be monitored and recorded, Sanjeet's device would be impractical since the patient or others may access the controlled drug without permission.
US 2005/0252924 to Pieper et al. discloses an apparatus for dispensing tablets, also in the form of pills, dragees or the like, having means for holding a blister pack, means for pushing out a tablet from the blister pack and also means for setting taking times and means for displaying taking times. The invention provides for the apparatus to have a bottom part and a lid removably connected to the bottom part for holding the blister pack and also having means for pushing out the tablets from the blister pack, the arrangement of the means being matched to the arrangement of the tablets in the blister pack which is to be held.
The apparatus of Pieper et al. is a manual dispenser which would require the nurse or other hospital staff to dedicate their time at regular intervals to administering the medication to the patient. Moreover, the patient himself has the ability to control the dispensing of the drug, which is undesirable, particularly when dealing with controlled drugs, as described above.
Accordingly, it is a principal object of the present invention to provide a medication dispenser which overcomes the difficulties and drawbacks associated with the prior art as described in part herein above.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a medication dispenser that prevents contamination of the drug prior to reaching the patient, by leaving the drug within its original packaging until immediately prior to administering to the patient, thereby enabling storage and reuse of leftover drugs for a subsequent patient.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide a medication dispenser that prevents the patient from accessing the drug unless dispensed by the dispenser.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a medication dispenser that avoids the necessity for requiring interaction by medical staff or anyone other than the patient from the time of calibrating the device until the dosage is complete or the patient no longer needs the medication.
It is yet a further object of the present invention to provide a medication dispenser that enables the controlled sequential delivery of a regimen of pills on an as-needed basis with a predetermined prescribed minimum time interval between delivery of each pill.
Additional objects and advantages of the invention will become apparent as the description proceeds.